


To trust God in the light is nothing (to trust him in the dark is faith)

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [143]
Category: Glee
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Genetic Engineering, Human Trafficking, M/M, Pseudo-Catholicism, Religious Content, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 11:36:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17866520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: After darkness has fallen, the coming of a new messiah has been prophesied. A child destined to lead mankind back on the right path. Almost every pope since the reformation of the church has dedicated his mandate to find this child and Blaine is no exception to that. After being informed of a child that could bear the mark of the messiah, Blaine and the boys leave the safety of the city dome to go see him.





	To trust God in the light is nothing (to trust him in the dark is faith)

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an **AU** from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.
> 
> We don't know much about this particular instance of the universe, except that Blaine is the Pope (yes, the pope), in some kind of post-apocalyptic, but technological advanced world, where religion is strictly intertwined with politics (go figure), media and entertainment industry. And that he's got two boys with him. You'll know more about it as soon as we do.  
> Please note, as it has been stated several times before, this is not and doesn't want to be a depiction of any real religion.
> 
> I don't know exactly what's gotten into me halfway through this story. Sometimes I lose control over my own characters and they do whatever they want. And porn happens.
> 
> Written for: Lande di Fandom's COW-T #9  
> Prompt: Darkness

Leo can't remember when the sky suddenly turned black and the sun disappeared behind a black veil of chemical darkness, but he remembers to have studied it in school, or what passed for school at the children market. The video on their tablets showed the city basking in the sunlight seconds before an eerie, huge cloud moved slowly but inexorably over it. The video was ten minutes long and they had watched it holding their breath. About fifty children, all staring at the screen in complete silence. None of them had ever seen the real sun before that moment.

Back in the day, the city was much newer and smaller. In the video, Leo could easily see that the four peripheral blocks and the compound itself were still missing. And there was no wall dividing the city from the outer lands, obviously, because there were no outer lands either, but a spread of green as wide as Leo had never seen before. Technology was less advanced too. People still drove oil-fueled cars and everyone had _impure_ genetics, even though they were called _naturals_ at the time.

According to his teacher, every day people had been straying further away from God, forgetting religion and neglecting their souls, until darkness had finally fallen upon the world and God hadn't been able to help mankind any longer. Those words, and the mental images of pain and punishment they summoned, had been branded so deeply into Leo's mind that they had stuck with him even when, years later, he had found out that there was also a scientific side to that story.

Other than losing interest in their souls, men had lost interest in each other and they had been very busy making war. Chemical weapons had been employed on a larger scale than ever before and something had, quite predictably, gone wrong. Those few scientific texts that were still allowed said that darkness was more the direct consequence of that than of the distance people had put between them and God. Still, God hadn't been able to intervene and a lot of people had died or had been seriously affected by the chemicals, so Leo was more than inclined to believe that darkness _was indeed_ some form of punishment from above. From what he could tell, there was no reason why the forces of evil couldn't have used chemical weapons to destroy them all.

Leo had been fascinated by that glimpse of a world he had never lived in and he had consumed any piece of information he could find at the children market, even though there wasn't much to find anymore. He had asked so many questions that, at some point, the nun who was in charge of teaching them had forbidden him to _speak_ to her ever again. But it didn't matter, he had already learned a lot. 

In their part of the world the cloud had completely destroyed the environment and forced people to live in the only city still standing, which was modified to sustain some form of life by covering it with a dome that simulated the sun and the alternation of day and night. A huge man-made fishbowl, so to speak. In the first aftermath of the cloud, people that had remained outside the city had been thought to be dead of radiations and disease, but it wasn't the case. A few years later, an entire population had emerged from the ruins of what once had been the countryside. A lot of them were chronically ill, some of them had suffered maiming and genetic alteration, but they were alive.

There had been some turmoils, obviously, as they had asked to be let into the city and the citizens had refused based on the fact that they were contagious, which they were. There had been a fight and the city had won, but the then pope had declared that the outsiders were still part of the population, they were the burden God had given them to atone and that the city should have taken care of them. And so the city had done, providing the outsiders with the food and water and medicines they need, protecting them when it was needed, day after day making them more and more dependent from the city.

Leo hasn't seen any of those things with his own eyes because he is born way after any of that ever happened and he has always lived in the city, under the dome, but he has quite an extensive knowledge of it – that is one of the reasons why Blaine took him in, together with his impure genetics, the fact that he's so curious and knowledgeable about history – and he has enough imagination to integrate what he read with vivid mental images. He can watch through the window now and see how this cleaned up plot of deserted land must have been back in the day, when mud was dank and green and wisps of toxic smoke raised from it.  
“You are awfully quiet.” Cody's gentle voice comes tiptoeing into his thoughts as he himself usually does in Leo's life.

“I was thinking,” Leo answers, offering him an apologetic smile. This is the first time Cody comes with them to see a possible candidate and he's not used to wait those long hours between their arrival in a place and Blaine's final decision after the interview. He must be so bored. Leo takes a mental note to be a little more considerate towards him. It's what Blaine asked him to do, after all.

“About what?” Cody is sitting properly on the poor excuse for a chair he's been given. His back straight and his tiny white hands on his lap, his fingers brushing only ever so often the beads of the rosary wrapped around his slim wrist. He's been like that for hours and Leo has no idea how he does that. Leo's body starts to tingle every time he stands still for more than a minute. He needs to move constantly.

“About this place before darkness fell,” Leo says, “and right after it has fallen. There was a lake not far from here. The day of the cloud it turned red and started boiling. And when it overflowed, the red water turned the soil into toxic mud. Nothing survived, it was a dead zone.”

Dead zones are specific portions of land where everything is dead and nothing can be cultivated in it, not even corrupted vegetables or fruit like in other areas, where people adapted to consume unhealthy produce and breed animals destined to die young or to give them every kind of diseases. Anything in the dead zones can kill you, from the air to the soil, to certain kind of insects that evolved inside the darkness. After the cloud, dead zones were the norm – it was one of the reasons why people living outside the city had been thought to be dead – but some of them has been cleaned up over time, not to produce as they are forever barren, but at least to let people live in it. Safe Haven is one of these _lucky_ places, and it was called so because it was the first dead zone to be cleaned up and ripped away from the clawed hands of death. Unfortunately, dead zones still outnumber places like this.

“It doesn't look that much alive to me now,” Cody points out, even though politely so. For the first time since they got here, he turns to look out the windows, where an endless wasteland lies in front of his eyes. The gray ground and the black sky makes look like a charcoal drawing or a dark room right before you turn on the light.

“Because it's not exactly alive,” Leo says. “It's just not dangerous, or at least not so much.”

“It's hard to look at it,” Cody confesses, finally turning back to look at the hall they're waiting in. It's not that much better, though. “Everything is so dark here.”

Everything is so much brighter in the city. It seems built in spite of the darkness surrounding it or maybe in utter fear of it. Everything in the city is colorful and shiny, from the jumbotrons in the streets to the clothes and even the hair and eyes of the people. Anything that has been remade by man has been designed to be of a more vibrant color. The sky is bluer, the cherry blossoms are pinker, even the greenery stands out in a blinding emerald green. The only pure white thing in the city are the pope's garments, which are still lined in gold. Everything is loud there and Cody is right, Leo kinda misses it too. “We are going to be back soon,” he tries to comfort him.

Cody hesitates. He clearly wants to say something, but his ever accommodating nature always prevents him from whining about things he doesn't like. “You can speak your mind,” Leo invites him. “There's nothing wrong with it.”

“I am not supposed to complain,” Cody says. 

“Say who?” Leo frowns. “I complain all the time.”

Cody looks around to make sure nobody can hear him, even though they are alone and they have been for a long time now. “The nuns say I am lucky to have been chosen for such an important task and I shouldn't complain ever. And they are right, you know, I am lucky.”

They have had this conversation at least a hundred times since Cody arrived and he's been here only six months. Leo doesn't really know how he will survive even another one if he has to have this discussion once again. Like Leo, Cody was left at the children market when he was just a baby and, except for a few years Leo doesn't know very much about, he has lived with the nuns most of his life. Those women cared for him, fed him and educated him, but they also raised him to be sold to someone with enough money to buy kids. Those people are usually merchants looking for cheap labor, theater managers looking for extras and brothel owners for obvious reasons, less frequently couples without children who want to make a family. The nuns are used to teach their charges to be polite and, most of all, to be grateful to whoever chooses them because those people are keeping them from starving in the streets. That is why complaining is not an option. 

But Cody was chosen by Blaine, like Leo himself was before him, and Blaine didn't choose him to be his perfect little slave. He is the pope, so of course it's an honor to have been chosen by him, and he wants to be obeyed, he can be a very stern man when he wants to be, but he never went to the children market to look for a slave or a mindless doll to play with. He likes that Leo is curious and challenging and that he always says what crosses his mind. And since he bought Cody to keep Leo company, Leo is pretty sure he doesn't want Cody to be all quite and obliging either. Surely Leo doesn't want that.

“Expressing an opinion doesn't make you any less grateful,” Leo reassures him. “Come on, what's the matter?”

Cody bites down at his lower lip, trying to decide if he really can talk; sometimes Leo does things even when he's not supposed to because he doesn't care about the consequences, but Cody is not as brave as him and he always feels awful when he gets scolded. He's been here a long time, though, and he's tired, so words end up fumbling out of his mouth. “It's been almost eight hours,” he whispers. “How long does it take? I want to go home.”

Leo grabs his hand. He gently plays with his fingers and brings them to his lips to kiss them. “Sometimes it's a long process,” he says, unable to lie to him. “But it has never taken him more than a day. I'm sure it's going to be over soon.”

At the beginning, Cody was wary of physical touch, especially from Leo. He had been raised with the idea that his body was sacred and that he had to do anything he could to preserve his purity, so the idea of sex was as disturbing to him as the idea of stealing or killing someone. But a lot has changed since he came to live with Blaine and he has learned that things are not quite as he was taught. For example, his body is sacred only to the extent that _he alone_ wants it to be and purity has a very different meaning in His Holiness' private apartments. 

Blaine never pressured him to do things he didn't want to do as he could have done. He waited for Cody to come to him, the same way he had done with Leo. The only difference was that Leo had climbed into his bed after only a week while it took Cody almost two months to be convinced to do the same. It took him even longer to warm up to Leo being so touchy with him. Not because he didn't like him – because he liked him a great deal – but only because, in his mind, accepting to be touched by Leo alone was still sinful, unless it hadn't been requested by His Holiness himself. But, with Blaine's blessing, Leo had relentlessly chipped away at his barriers until Cody had capitulated.

Now, Cody is used to Leo constantly being all over him. He likes it even, because sometimes it's comforting and _all the time_ it's pleasurable. “What is he even doing in there?” Cody asks

“That's a good question,” Leo pulls him towards himself until Cody ends up sitting on his legs. “He has never let me in with him. I think he's looking for a mark.”

“What kind of mark?” Cody asks again, resting his back against Leo's chest.

“I don't know. _A mark_ ,” Leo repeats. “That's literally everything the scriptures say.”

The new scriptures were redacted a few years after the cloud had blacked out the sun. Scared by the sudden darkness, people had turned quite obviously to religion, but the old one had not many answers to give at that point. It had appeared necessary to renovate what had been the rules up to that moment, to find a new road to lead the believers on. So, the church had undergone a serious transformation and a completely new cult had come out of it.

During the revising, the coming of a new messiah was prophesied. A child – whose gender was unknown – was going to be born in a place of despair and they were going to bear a mark only the pope was going to recognize. The child was going to be destined to grow up and lead mankind on the right path again. 

Almost every pope since the reformation has dedicated his mandate to find this child and Blaine is no exception to that. Among the many things he has to do, checking and interviewing – when they are old enough – possible candidates is one of his most important tasks. He has emissaries in every corner of the world and he regularly receives reports from them. Any time they inform him of a possible candidate, he leaves the city to go check personally. 

That is why they are in Safe Haven now. They have left the city early in the morning with a small group of chosen guards to make sure the trip was fairly safe. It's been a long time since a pope has been viciously attacked by the outsiders, but you can never be too sure. Once they got here, they have been met by the mayor of the place himself, a very emaciated man by the name of Berberis, currently ruling over a total of sixty-five people, all of them somewhat maimed or diseased.

The man has done his best to welcome His Holiness and his train properly. There were food and fresh clothes ready for all of them – even if nobody hasn't touched anything – and the shack they have been brought to has been cleaned up and refreshed as much as possible. There's still greenish dust on everything and the walls have a film of grime on them, but at least the place doesn't smell like rotten eggs like they usually do.  
Blaine has disappeared hours ago into a room, from which every now and then comes the ear-piercing crying of a tiny baby, and they are supposed to wait for him to come out. 

The protocol doesn't require the pope to bring his two _assistants_ along; in fact no other pope before him has ever traveled with nothing more than his escort, but Blaine doesn't go anywhere without the two of them, even if it means to leave them waiting outside a door for hours. Blaine says that if they live all their life inside the city and never take one single step out of it, they will grow up dull and stupid like most of the people there. And also, he likes to do things he's not supposed to or that he knows will shock and outrage the upper echelons, like buying two kids and quite blatantly sharing the bed with them.

Leo doesn't mind traveling around, even if there's not that much to see except desert and death and a lot of sick people, but that's probably exactly what Blaine wants him to see. What he hates, though, is to wait. He has no patience and with nothing to distract himself with – a book, a video game, or the chance to lay Cody down on any surface – it's hard for him to stand still and quiet. “We should explore this place,” he says suddenly, standing up and gently forcing him to do the same.

“We should definitely not,” Cody says, looking at him in horror. “I know I said we've been here an awful amount of time but I didn't mean we should disobey.”

Leo offers him his hand. “We're just going to take a walk around. That's hardly disobeying.”

“We could get lost,” Cody says again, looking around.

“How can we get lost in a place with four rooms?” Leo chuckles, holding his hand. “The church compound is way bigger than this and you've never gotten lost there.”  
“There are signs at ever corner in the compound,” Cody murmurs. He can read, thank you very much. The compound is a labyrinth, without those signs he would still be roaming the halls of that place aimlessly, like a ghost.

“And here you've got me,” Leo says confidently. “I can find my way anywhere.”

“But he told us to wait here,” Cody insists weakly, torn between his sense of responsibility and boredom pushing him towards doing something, anything, to stop being so bored.

Leo smiles at him, an impish, playful smile. “He won't know if you don't tell him.”

“Oh, I would certainly know,” Blaine's stern voice catches them by surprise as he comes out of the room. They were so busy talking that they didn't hear the door opening. “You can be sure of that.”

Cody instantly stares at the ground, one of his hands in Leo's and the other behind his back. Leo does exactly the same, but looking way less apologetic. “Your Holiness,” he greets him.

Blaine walks past them, simply expecting them to come along. “Don't revere me if you don't believe in the words that come out of your mouth, Leo,” he says. “It is inappropriate and, most importantly, I find it very annoying.”

Leo and Cody quickly follow his billowing robes, picking up the pace to catch up with him. “Did you find him?” Leo asks, ignoring the remark.

Blaine is already taking off the golden gloves he usually wears during these examinations. There are tired marks under his eyes and a tension on his face that wasn't there when he entered the room. “We are not discussing this here,” he says. “Now get in the pod, quickly.”

The pod – an egg shaped vehicle with the pope insignia on the sides – is waiting for them right outside the shack, surrounded by the escort. Adam, the head guard, approaches them right away, on hand on the weapon at his hip. “Your Holiness,” he greets him with a brief bow. “The pod has been readied to get you back to the city.”

Adam's engineered genetics is clear in his broad shoulders and fine features, his body the pinnacle of human prowess. As all the guards, he's been made perfect, more resilient and impervious to common diseases. But unlike all his fellow soldiers in Blaine's personal guard, he's sunny blond, and that makes him stand out, even more so in a dark place like this.

“There's been a change of plans,” Blaine informs him. “We're heading East.”

Adam has been trained well enough to keep his composure, but he's visibly confused. “East, Your Holiness?” He asks politely, making sure he heard right. Then, when Blaine doesn't seem to correct him, he gets closer to him and lowers his voice. “You've been away for ten hours. The Geiger counter doesn't show high levels of radiations, but it could still be dangerous to travel so farther away without proper preparations.”

“We're heading to the outpost,” Blaine clarifies, even though Leo, who's listening to the whole conversation, feels exactly as confused as before. “We will spend the night there and, hopefully, head back home tomorrow morning.

“Yes, Your Holiness.”

Leo watches Adam leave to go speak with one of the other guards. “Aren't we going home?” He asks Blaine, frowning.

“No,” Blaine says in a tired voice. “Now get in the pod, both of you.”

The pod is big enough to easily accommodate the three of them and a little table, on which they can have meals or Blaine can work if he needs to. One or both seats can even be extended to form a bed in case of longer journeys. Leo has never traveled for more than twenty-four hours, but he always turns the seat into a bed because it is way more comfortable that way. In fact, it's the first thing he does after he gets inside, so Cody can lie down on his stomach and kick away his shoes, his feet swinging in the air. 

Leo waits for them to be moving and well on the way before speaking again. “You look angry,” he says, noticing the tense line of Blaine's jaw and neck. Blaine is usually very stern, especially in public, but he always emanates a feeling of calmness, of quiet self-assurance. He never frets, he never panics. Now, Leo can feel his nervousness on his own skin and he doesn't like it.

“That is because I am,” Blaine says.

Leo throws a glance at Cody who fell asleep the moment the pod has started rocking a little bit. He scoots over to get closer to Blaine. “Why? What happened?”

Blaine strokes his cheek gently and he seems to relax a little bit. “They tried to deceive me,” he explains, “which as you know, is a behavior I never condone.”

Yes, Leo knows. He knows of his own experience how disappointed Blaine can be when you lie to him, and his disappointment is cold and unforgiving. Leo hates it. He has lied to him a few times when he was younger and never again. “Lies are sinful acts of cowardice,” he recites from the book of rules, “and we should never resort to them, but take responsibility for our actions and always strive for the truth.”

“Exactly,” Blaine confirms. “You know your lesson. Should I be impressed by your morals or are you only repeating what you memorized?”

“It depends. Memorizing is hard, do I get special points for that too?” Leo smirks.

“You are a pest, you know that?” Blaine comments, leaning forward to to kiss him slowly. 

Leo moans in his mouth, both happy for the unexpected gift and unsatisfied by their position, so he crawls closer to Blaine, half climbing on the table to get a better angle. From his point of view, he's been neglected for far too long today and he needs some attention, but he's still so very curious about what happened in that room that he can't really let it go. “What did they lie to you about?” He asks, luring Blaine's tongue into his mouth again and _demanding_ another kiss.

Blaine snorts, realizing that he won't distract him with anything this time, which must be a first. “There was a kid here,” he says, combing his hair back with his hands. “A baby boy, born healthy despite everything. They had called me for him. But his mother ran away with him last night. So, when I arrived, instead of telling me the truth they presented to me another baby, a tiny, wretched thing who won't survive the week. As if I could ever think he was the messiah.”

“So we're following her?” Leo wants to make sure he got it right.

“Exactly.”

“In this wasteland?” Leo goes on, suddenly a little worried. He knows that Blaine is not stupid and he would never put him or Cody in danger, that the pod gives them some form of protection and that they have the escort and everything, but the outer lands are not a safe place to go travel around without planning the journey ahead.

“As you surely heard me say while you were eavesdropping earlier, we're headed to the nearest outpost,” Blaine explains, pouring himself and Leo a glass of clean water they brought from the city.

“Yes, about that,” Leo takes his first sip of water of the day and it tastes delicious. Besides, everything coming from the city does. “What exactly is an outpost?”

Blaine retrieves his personal tablet from a pocket on the pod's door and shows him an old map of the area dating back to a few years after the darkness had fallen. Leo can easily see the city right at the center of it with its octagonal-shaped plan. The church compound was just a tiny circle on the right side back then. Now it takes up almost one third of the city center. It's a town in itself within the city. “These are the outposts closer to the city,” Blaine points at five black squares on the map. “They are small buildings equipped with decontamination showers, quarantine chambers and a smaller dome, similar to the one the city has. They are also stoked with clean food and medicines. Twenty people can live there for a month. They were originally built as shelters for the workers that would leave the city to go remediate the toxic swamps. They would work in the wasteland during the day and spend the night in the outposts, so they didn't have to go back and forth from the city, risking their lives. Now the outposts remain as staging posts for people who travel the wasteland. They are run by the military.”

“And who told you she went East?” Leo asks.

Blaine taps the screen with his finger over one of the outposts on the right of the map. “Because that's the closest one. A young woman with her newborn child would never cross the wasteland heading to one of the farthest outposts, it's too risky. But she might have gotten to the one in the East. There she might find someone who can give her a ride, that's why I want to get there as soon as possible.”

Leo nods, it makes sense. “Why don't you call them, tell them to stop her?”

“Adam is trying,” Blaine says, impressed by Leo's reasoning, “but communications don't work out here. It's the cloud interfering with the signal. She's got at least eight hours on us, but we move faster and she must stop at the outpost for a while if she wants to live. We are going to find her.”

“What are you going to do to her when you get her?”

Blaine frowns at him. “What kind of question is that? Absolutely nothing, of course,” Blaine answers. “She did nothing wrong.”

“She ran away with the messiah,” Leo points out.

“ _Possible_ messiah, we don't know that yet,” Blaine corrects him. “She wasn't the one calling me, someone else did. She must have gotten scared and she did the only thing she thought of and fled. I only want to check her baby and stop her from doing something even more stupid than she's already done.”

“How will you know if the baby is the messiah? What mark should he have?”

Leo has asked this question many times before and he has never received an answer, but that doesn't seem to stop him. “You know I can't tell you that,” Blaine sighs. “That's for me to know.”

“What if this baby really is the messiah?”

“Then, I will talk to this woman and explain to her the importance of bringing her son to the city,” Blaine answers.

“What if she doesn't want to give him to you?”

Leo's question gives him pause. He takes his time to answer, he seems to look for the right words and then, finally, he says, “God will tell me what to do. Now enough with the questions. Wake up Cody, we need to eat something.”

*

It's almost night when they get to the outpost, even if it's hard to say because the light has not changed once since they left the city this morning. One step out of the city walls and it's night for the rest of the day. Adam says that at night the darkness gets a little bit darker and you can see the distant flickering of the stars behind the cloud, but Leo can't see anything, except for this blackness. It's like a giant hand had given the sky a coat of black paint. They are pretty tired, though, and the clock says it's almost time for bed, so Adam must be right.

They are in the middle of nowhere. The whole area around them is gray and dusty, still bearing the signs of the cleansing it must have gone through, and except for a couple of bluish shrubs sadly scattered here and there, it is completely bare. The outpost is a square building, very different from what Leo was expecting. It's actually way bigger than the shack they visited this morning, but still not even close to what they are used to; with its black walls and long slot-like windows, it looks like one of the warehouses they stock provisions in at the church compound in the city. But at least there is a nice small dome over it and that alone is a relieving sight. 

A dome means clean air and sun – or at least it will mean that tomorrow morning – healthy food and water. They will be able to breathe without feeling that tickle in the back of their throats or to look around without worrying about clouds of dust scratching their eyes. Leo hadn't realized how much he was missing all that until now that he's one step away from having it again.

They are approached at the entrance by an armed man in uniform. “Your Holiness,” he says with a brief bow of his head. “I'm General Coleman and I welcome you to the East Outpost.” 

Blaine nods to him, coming out of the pod. “Thank you, general. Please, notify all the personnel that we are going to stay the night. And I'll need to speak with you as soon as our decontamination is over,” he informs him.”

“Of course, Your Holiness,” General Coleman bows again as he watches Leo and Cody coming out of the pod too with a puzzled expression on his face. “I want to apologize in advance for any possible inconvenience. The facility is in no way suitable for a man of your status, but we are honored to have you with us and we will do our best to make your stay at least bearable to you and your train.”

Blaine waves his hand dismissively. “The facility will do just fine,” he says. “You haven't received our messages, have you?”

“No, Your Holiness,” General Coleman shakes his head. “Only fragmented pieces of communications. We knew someone was coming, but we didn't know who. Radio connections don't work very well outside of the dome.”

“I thought so,” Blaine nods. “Please, show us to the decontamination center.”

The first step of the protocol for reentering from the outer lands is always the decontamination shower. It means scraping your skin until it's red under jets of slightly smelly water and Leo hates it. The only thing that makes it bearable for him today – besides the fact that it prevents him from getting sick – is that he will get to see Cody naked, which is always a plus.

General Coleman leads them to the showers and leaves them at it while he himself undergoes the same procedure, having stepped out of the dome to get them. Leo takes off his shirt, pants and underpants, and he throws everything in the cleanser. They will come out the other side washed and dried for him to put them on again. Cody follows his every move, without understanding. “Do I have to take my clothes off too?” He asks.

“Yes, pet,” Blaine nods, shrugging off the heavy cape that's part of his traveling outfit. “Leo, show him.”

Leo unbuckles Cody's belt and helps him out of the robe he's wearing. Underneath his institutional light blue clothes, Cody is as white as milk with only the slightest shade of pink on his cheeks and rounded bottom. The first time Leo saw him naked he said he looked like a candy and he still thinks that. “Both you and your clothes need to be cleaned,” he explains, while he gently pushes him under the shower nozzle and turns on the water, “because residues get stuck to your skin and to fabric.”

Leo gets under the same nozzle, bringing a sponge with him. He starts scrubbing himself first as he shamelessly enjoys the sight of Cody getting wet. “It smells a little,” Cody says, pushing his hair away from his face.

“It's the chemicals in it, the good ones. You'll get used to it,” Leo reassures him. Once he's done scraping his skin red, he starts doing the same to Cody. “It's gonna sting a little bit, try to resist.” He's a little more gentle than he was on himself in passing the sponge on Cody's skin, but he's still very thorough as he knows how important this is.

Blaine watches them carefully as he cleans himself and only intervenes when he sees that Leo is wasting time by lingering unnecessarily on some parts of Cody. His hand moves way more slowly and less roughly between Cody's thighs and Cody is reacting to that as he normally does, parting his legs and blatantly rubbing himself against Leo's fingers. “Boys, this is not the time or the place to enjoy each other,” he scolds them. “Leo, hands off him, come on.”

Leo whines a little, but he does comply. He gives Cody a small kiss on his nose and then backs off, letting him rinse himself. When they get out of the shower, General Coleman is there to wait for them, next to the pile of their clothes, and he does everything in his power not to look at Cody still drying himself with a towel. “Come with me, please,” he only says, clearing his throat, when everybody has put their clothes back on. He leads them down the hall and through a door, which finally lets them in that part of the outpost that is actually _inside_ the dome. One step inside and they can instantly feel the difference in the air, the quality of the light itself is different in here. They can see the night outside the windows, but it's a softer darkness, dotted with stars. It feels more natural, even if it's completely artificial. 

Inside, the outpost also looks more lively. There are pot plants scattered all over the entrance hall and even a big fish tank with real living fish in it. An audio system is playing soft music and there's smell of food coming from somewhere, which makes Cody smile happily. It feels like home in here. “I've had one of the senior officers' room readied for you, Your Holiness,” General Coleman informs Blaine. “And part of the barrack has been emptied for your _assistants_. There's a private bathroom there and—“

“My boys sleep with me,” Blaine clarifies, without so much as a quiver in his voice. “There will be no need to force your men to sleep all crammed together. Please, have them go back to their legitimate beds.”

General Coleman struggles to keep a straight face this time. Leo has seen this happen many times before, during those trips he and Blaine made before Cody arrived. In the city everybody knows about him and Cody and, even if nobody speaks of it freely, everybody is aware of where they sleep and what they do with Blaine. Not because it was something they expected to happen, but because Blaine has never really denied it or acted differently with them in public. He doesn't kiss them or anything, but there's a very specific intimacy between the three of them and it shows.

In the beginning, people were outraged. Leo remembers the headlines regarding him and Blaine (and Cody later) on the newspapers, on the news, on every talk show. It was annoying and upsetting and confusing because he liked being with Blaine but he knew popes didn't have partners of any kind and so what those people said sounded right to him. But Blaine never faltered and day after day people got used to Leo and, later, they got used to Cody too. Blaine made them accept Leo and Cody as he made them accept the micro-camera in his tiara, during televised mass.

But religion perception outside the city is a bit different. People who live far away from Blaine's daily TV and live appearances, from the show that is his mass, from his personality, so to speak, experience religion in a very different way. They are usually more conservative, more attached to the rules, they are more faithful to what the cult was at the beginning all those years ago than to what it is now. They are not ready for that, because they live a completely different life. So this General Coleman, who comes from the city but lives here in the middle of nowhere, knows his religion from the book and the book says nothing about the pope living his life as Blaine does. 

He doesn't protest, though. “Uh, sure, Your Holiness,” he says hesitantly.

“Good. We will need an extra pillow and some fresh fruit cut into little pieces,” Blaine goes on. “Oh, and if by any chance you have chocolate in here, that too. I know your supplies are numbered, so I won't ask you to give us more than you can spare. Anything you can give will do just fine. Is there somewhere quiet where we can talk?”

Still a little confused, General Coleman nods. “Of course, my office.” Then, he gestures to another soldier who gets closer. “He will escort your assistants to your room, Your Holiness.”

Blaine nods. “I'll see you two in a little while,” he says to the boys. “Behave.”

*

At home, their apartment alone takes up a whole floor. There's a bedroom with a bed big enough for the three of them, Blaine's closet, which is a room on its own, a huge bathroom with a massive bathtub, a living room and two smaller rooms, one for each of the boys. They had beds in there once, but they would never use them, so Leo has filled his own room with computers and video games and a couch where he lies most of his time, and Cody with canvas and colors. 

The room they gave them at the outpost is much smaller, as it was to be expected, but it's clean and bright and there's a viewing device, which is not connected to the net but it can still run movies from the database. The first thing Leo does, after entering, is start pressing buttons on the screen, browsing through the catalog.  
“Do you think she's here?” Cody asks, sitting cross-legged on the bed. They filled him in during lunch on the pod.

“I suppose so,” Leo shrugs. “Blaine says she can't have gone anywhere else and we didn't see her on the way here.”

“If this baby is the messiah,” Cody reasons, “does it mean he will come back with us?”

Leo has finally found something to watch. It has magic in it, which he always likes, and puppies that always make Cody squeak adorably. “I suppose so, yeah,” he says, pressing play and climbing on the bed with him.

“Have you ever thought about what would it mean to have a baby at the compound?” 

Leo sits with his back against the headboard and pulls Cody closer until he's seated between his legs, so he can hug him comfortably. “I don't think he would be our responsibility,” he says, while dragon puppies roll around on the screen making cute, silly sounds. “The nuns will take care of him or Blaine will hire a nanny.”

“But we're not talking about a normal baby, it would be—“

Leo moans loudly and then hides his face in his neck. “Can we not talk about the messiah for at least an hour?” He complains. Then he kisses him. “Please?”

Cody chuckles, Leo's hair tickling his neck. “Alright, no more talking about the messiah,” he concedes. “Let's watch the movie.”

Leo moans again, this time a little less annoyed and a little more aroused. “I don't think I want to watch the movie anymore,” he says, suckling at the skin under Cody's earlobe.

“And what do you want to do?” 

As a response, Leo pushes him down on the mattress and forces his legs open with his knee. “What about this?” He asks, searching Cody's lips for a kiss.

Cody chuckles and then moans when the kiss turns deeper and wetter. “Blaine told us to behave.”

Leo looks down at him and smirks. “I'm not doing anything he wouldn't do,” he says, sliding down Cody's body, feeling every inch of it with his lips. Cody tries to think about something to say to stop him, but when Leo's head dives between his thighs, his brain just shuts down.

When Blaine joins them about forty minutes later, he finds Cody with his face buried in the pillows – three, as requested – and Leo with his cock deeply buried into his ass, and the sight doesn't surprised him at all. Nor they act surprised to be found like that. In fact, this is not the first time and it's not one of their most embarrassing positions ever. “How long did he resist before jumping on you?” Blaine asks, taking off his cufflinks.

“Five minutes,” Cody answers, showing his open hand.

Blaine shakes his head. “Leo,” he sighs, taking off his shirt. “What did I tell you a million times already? You need to have more control over yourself.”

“In my defense,” Leo holds Cody by his hips and thrusts hard in him a couple of times, tearing a satisfied lust-filled moan out of his mouth, “it's been a long day and we both needed it.”

“Alright, you couldn't wait the first time,” Blaine says, sitting down on the bed to take off is pants too. “What about the second time?”

“How do you—“

Blaine kisses him, which is both a way to shut him up and to soften the next blow. “Be a good boy and share,” he says, nodding towards Cody. “You had your turn already.”

Cody hiccups desperately when Leo comes out of him, protesting weakly, and he moans again when Blaine takes his place a moment later. “What about the woman?” Leo asks. “Is she here?”

“She was,” Blaine confirms, picking up exactly from where Leo has stopped. Sometimes Cody wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them if Blaine wasn't a little bigger and a little stronger. “But she left the moment she understood someone was coming here.”

“So we're letting her go?” Leo asks, stroking himself lazily.

“She's on foot and there's nothing around here for miles,” Blaine answers, leaning forward, his whole body covering Cody's smaller one as he thrusts harder and harder in him. “The soldiers are bringing her back.”

*

General Coleman knocks on Blaine's door at dawn.

Blaine is entangled in his boys but the urgency in the man's voice wakes him up immediately. He remembers where he is and what he's doing, and especially what he was waiting for. “Come on, kiddo, wake up,” he shakes Leo hard, knowing that nothing less than that will take him out of his dreams. “Cody?”

Cody raises his head, confused. His body feels a little heavy and he's sore. “Mh?”

“Wake up, both of you,” he repeats, “the soldiers are back.”  
He could let them sleep, but as much as he likes to pamper them, this _is_ part of their job. They _are_ his assistants, and he doesn't want to leave them in his bedroom while he meets this woman and her child. That, more than anything else, would look bad.

The soldiers has brought the woman back to the outpost, but she's dying. They found her at the side of the road a few miles away, so weak that she couldn't walk anymore. They couldn't take her body inside the dome, but the resident doctor took a look at her. She is sick, she has been for a while, like everybody else in her community, and this last night out there in the cold was the final blow. She has hours at most.

The baby is alive, though. He was inside a bag, wrapped in blankets and pressed against her chest. He had a surgical mask over his face. She probably thought it would help him breathe, filtering the air. The doctor visited him too and he's fine. In fact, he's way better than the doctor was expecting. A baby boy, five maybe six months old, healthy and reactive, with no visible malformation.

When they enter the quarantine chamber where they've put her and her baby, the woman slowly turns her head to them. “She says her name is Helena,” General Coleman says.

Blaine kneels beside her bed and hold her hand in his. “Hello Helena,” he greets her. “My name is Blaine, I am—“

“The pope,” she says, weakly. “I know.”

Blaine smiles. “You are safe here,” he continues. “Nobody will harm you or your baby. What's his name?”

Helena swallows down the lump in her throat. “Timothy Trevor,” she says. “Timmy.”

“Timmy,” Blaine repeats, squeezing her hand gently. “That's a beautiful name. Listen, Helena, I know you are scared right now and that you ran away because you were afraid for your baby's life, but—“

She starts to cry suddenly and without a sound. She shakes her head, tears cleaning paths along her dust-stained cheeks. “No?” Blaine asks her. But then, he thinks she must be confused, she probably doesn't even fully realize where she is, so he goes on, ignoring her feeble protests. “Timmy is safe,” he repeats. “I have been called to see if he bears the mark, but my examination won't harm him. I will give him back to you as soon as I'm done.”

She keeps crying and shaking her head, her eyes closed in frustration. Blaine raises his hand without turning around. “I need some privacy,” he says. “Everybody leave the room. Not you two. Boys, you stay.”

Leo opens his eyes wide, in shock. This has never happened before and he's not sure why it's happening now, but he waits until everybody has left the room and the door is closed to say something. “Why are you letting us stay?” He asks.

Blaine is about to answer but Helena grabs his arm. Even the smallest movement seems to cause her great pain, but she still hangs onto him, her eyes wide open, staring at him. “Your Holiness,” she breaths out, painstakingly. 

“I'm listening, Helena.”

Helena pulls him down, close enough that she can speak in his ear because she almost has no voice anymore, the disease taking life away from her one breath at the time. Leo can see her lips moving, but no sound reaches him where he stands with Cody a few feet away from her bed and Blaine. He can see the expression on Blaine's face changing, tho, turning into something he can't easily read like a moment before.

Then she's gone, and that's all that remains of her: a baby and that expression on Blaine's face.

“What happened?” Leo asks. “Is she...?”

“Yes,” Blaine says, softly. He passes his hand over her eyes and closes them, then he stands up, looking a little lost around himself. Eventually, he locates the baby in his makeshift crib made out of a fruit crate at the end of the bed, and he gets closer to look at him. Timmy is pink and chubby, like any other baby, and his hair is already blonde like his mother's. He's able to sit and he makes big smiles at Blaine when he sees him. He doesn't look afraid nor upset.

Blaine picks him up and holds him against his chest, lulling him a little bit. Timmy closes his tiny fists around the fabric of his robes and pulls at them, making all kind of happy sounds. Leo doesn't understand what's going on and that always upsets him more than anything else. Is that what Blaine does to examine the babies? Is this how he knows if they are the messiah or not? 

“Blaine?” Leo tries to call him, to reach him behind all the confusion that's in his eyes. “Are you alright? Does he have the mark?”

Blaine turns around, giving his back to them. For a very long moment, Timmy's joyful babbling is the only sound in the room. “It's him,” he says at last, “we're bringing him back with us.”


End file.
